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October 31, 2009

Valley volleyball squads look to advance today in regionals

By Andy Amey

Northview’s Knights are the new girls at the party in more ways than one in Indiana high school volleyball regionals involving four Wabash Valley teams today.

Class A representatives Shakamak and Rockville are making their third straight and second straight regional trips. Sullivan returns to Class 3A regional competition that it knows well after a one-year absence.

But Northview is a Class 4A champion for the first time — the Knights won a sectional most recently in 1996, in a single-class format — and will be at the Seymour Regional along with three teams who seem to be there virtually every season.

Fortunately, the Northview girls are not shy.

The Knights get the toughest of the three Seymour perennials out of the way first, when they face third-ranked Floyd Central in the 11 a.m. opener. Ninth-ranked Columbus East plays Castle in the second semifinal.

“From what I’ve been told, [the Highlanders] are along the lines of Plainfield, but with a better setter,” coach Scott McDonald of the Knights said earlier this week.

“The setter is 6-feet, and everybody else is under that, but they have one [prominent] outside hitter.”

McDonald is hopeful that Floyd Central might be vulnerable in serve-receive — the Knights, with Kaylee Clark leading the way, were strong in that area in their sectional at Martinsville last week — and expects that the defensive prowess of Clark and libero Ashlen Buck is vital to his team’s chances.

“We’ve got to pass. We’re not big enough to outhit anybody,” McDonald said. “But with Ashlen and Kaylee passing like they can, we’re going to get swings sometime.”

Should the Knights get behind early, they’re not likely to become discouraged after their history of sectional comebacks.

“I told [Northview girls athletic director] Jan [Gambill, herself a former volleyball coach] to tell Floyd Central that we’ll start out down 0-2 so we can get [the match] over in three [games],” McDonald joked.

Seeing his team rally from 0-2 deficits twice made last weekend a special one for McDonald, his family and the entire Northview community, he indicated.

“This was our first Class [4A] sectional championship, and I’m so happy for the kids,” the coach said. “So many people doubted them … and the way they rallied around each other [to win the sectional] was really neat.”

In Class 3A competition, Sullivan goes to the Jasper Regional to face a team they’ve already played, Boonville, in a field without a ranked team. Silver Creek plays the host Wildcats in the 11 a.m. opener.

“We played [Boonville] at their place the first Saturday in October,” coach Jennifer Murdock of Sullivan said this week. “We lost in two [in a best-of-three weekend tournament format], but the second game was closer … and we had played back-to-back and [the Pioneers] didn’t, because it was their tournament.”

The Golden Arrows shouldn’t be intimidated, in other words. They might even be playing a team that could take them lightly. And with no ranked teams in the field, and with comparable records among all four teams …

“Of any of the years we’ve been down there [to Jasper], this is one regional that is definitely up for grabs,” Murdock concluded.

Jennifer Pakiz thinks that could be the case as Wes-Del too, even though two teams — defending regional champion Lafayette Central Catholic and the host Warriors — are ranked in the top five in Class A.

But Pakiz’ Rockville team has the best record among the four, the Rox don’t have to play either of the ranked teams in their first match … and maybe the survivor of the second semifinal between the third-ranked Knights and the fifth-ranked host team won’t have much left for the championship.

“Rockville has never won even a game at a regional,” Pakiz said this week, “so that’s something we want to take care of first [in the 11 a.m. match against Randolph Southern].

“But we have some leadership really starting to show,” added Pakiz, whose roster includes at least two future Division I athletes in Beth Mahurin (Indiana State volleyball) and Lindsey Greene (Illinois State softball). “The girls are excited to get this done.”

Should Rockville win at Wes-Del, they’d play the winner of the South Decatur Regional in the state semifinals at Muncie a week from now. The Rox might even get another chance to play Shakamak, which handed Rockville one of its four losses earlier this fall at the Shakamak Invitational.

Coach Jeri Morin’s Lakers have a situation similar to Rockville’s today — playing the first match at South Decatur, with the ranked team and defending regional champion involved in the later semifinal.

Shakamak’s record isn’t as good as that of its first-round foe, Edinburgh, but its schedule has probably been tougher.

“We feel pretty good about [today’s match],” Morin said this week. “We’ve been [to the regional] the last three years, [Edinburgh] hasn’t been there for 36 years.”

The past two years the Lakers have run into Indianapolis Lutheran in the first round of regional play, and Lutheran, ranked ninth despite a record barely above .500, is considered the favorite again.

“The girls have been practicing pretty well,” Morin said. “Our goal right now is to make it past the first game, because we haven’t done that yet.”



Indiana volleyball regionals

Class 4A

At Seymour

Northview (27-9) vs. Floyd Central (33-3), 11 a.m., followed by Columbus East (27-8) vs. Castle (27-7)

Class 3A

At Jasper

Silver Creek (25-11) vs. Jasper (21-13), 11 a.m., followed by Sullivan (24-10) vs. Boonville (25-10)

Class A

At South Decatur

Edinburgh (28-6) vs. Shakamak (21-9), 11 a.m., followed by Indianapolis Lutheran (18-16) vs. Rising Sun (27-7)

At Wes-Del

Randolph Southern (20-15) vs. Rockville (26-4), 11 a.m., followed by Lafayette Central Catholic (28-7) vs. Wes-Del (25-7)



All championship matches 7 p.m.

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